This 35mm screening is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank. Here are the details of the season. Key Largo is also being screened on August 19th. Details here.
Time Out review:
Reworking of a Maxwell Anderson
play about a gangster under threat of deportation who holes up with his
henchmen in a semi-derelict hotel on an island off Florida, holding the
occupants at gunpoint and remaining blind to the menace posed by a
coming hurricane. The debt to The Petrified Forest is obvious, but instead of wallowing in world-weary pseudo-philosophy, Key Largo
has altogether sharper things to say about post-war disillusionment,
corruption in politics, and the fact that the old freebooting ways of
the gangster were about to change into something more sinisterly
complex. John Huston skilfully breaks up the action (basically one set and
one continuous scene), working subtle variations on his groupings with
the aid of superb deep-focus camera-work by Karl Freund. And although the characters are basically stereotypes, they are
lent the gift of life by a superlative cast: Edward G Robinson as the truculent
Little Caesar, Humphrey Bogart as an embittered ex-Army officer, Lauren Bacall as the
innocent who loves him, and above all Claire Trevor as the gangster's
disillusioned, drink-sodden moll.
Tom Milne
Here (and above) is the trailer.
Tom Milne
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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